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VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY 



LECTURE BY 



SWAMI ABHEDANANDA 



Religion of the Hindus 



DELIVERED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE VEDANTA SOCIETY, 

AT CARNEGIE LYCEUM, NEW YORK, SUNDAY, 

NOVEMBER 4th, I9OO 



Published by the Vedanta Society 

NEW YORK 

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Copyright, 1901 



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Price 10 Cents 



^E LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Coet£S Received 

MOV. 26 1901 

Copyright entry 
{CLASS ^XXo. W 
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" That which exists is One ; wise men call It by various names —Rigveda % 
I. I6U1 U6. 



THE RELIGION OF THE HINDUS. 

The religion of the Hindus is as old as the first ap- 
pearance of the Aryans on the fertile country of north- 
western India. It is the unanimous opinion of all 
the Oriental scholars, that the forefathers of the 
Aryans who inhabited India were, in prehistoric times, 
the common ancestors of the Persians, Greeks, 
Romans, Germans, Anglo-Saxons, and all of those 
who are now known as the descendants of the Aryan 
family. A modern orthodox Hindu, who lives on the 
bank of the Ganges, and dislikes to associate with a 
European calling him a " Mlechha," does not know 
that the so-called " Mlechla " has only a more dis- 
tant blood-relationship to him than his own brqther or 
sister, and that he differs from him only in manners, 
customs, and modes of living. The same Aryan blood 
flows to-day in the veins of a full-blooded German, 
Frenchman, Anglo-Saxon, or an American, who de- 
spises a Hindu because of his brown skin, or his 
religious beliefs, and calls him a " heathen," not know- 
ing that the so-called " heathen " is of his own race 
and that he still upholds the unparalleled religious 
ideas of his ancient Aryan forefathers. An educated 
German, or a liberal-minded American of to-day, more 



2 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

closely resembles in his mode of thinking, in his intel- 
lectual pursuits, in freedom of thought and in spiritual 
ideals, an educated Hindu of the present time, than he 
does a Jew or any other descendant of the Semitic 
race. However different a Hindu may appear to an 
American externally, it should always be remembered 
that both are descendants of the common Aryan stock. 
The word " Hindu " is of comparatively later origin 
in the history of the Aryan family. It was at first used 
by the Persian invaders of India, but it has never been 
adopted by the Indo-Aryans themselves. The proper 
name of the nation which inhabits India is " Aryan." 
Even to-day, the so-called Hindus call themselves 
" Aryans." Their religion is neither Hinduism nor 
Brahmanism; these names do not mean anything to 
them, being given by foreigners, not by natives of 
India. They call their religion " Arya Dharma," that 
is, Aryan Religion, or the religion of the ancient 
Aryans ; or " Sanatana Dharma," the Eternal Re- 
ligion. When the Persian invaders came to the north- 
west of India, they found the river Indus, in Sanskrit 
" Sindhu," and called that river " Hindu " instead, 
and those who inhabited the east side of that river, 
" Hindus." Afterwards their religion was called Hin- 
duism by the Mohammedan and Christian invaders. 
The word Brahmanism is of a still later origin, being 
an invention of the Christian missionaries. It is the 
general belief in the West, that the ancient Hindus, 
or rather the Indo-Aryans, were uncivilized people, 
that they had no religion of any kind; but the stu- 
dents of the Rig Veda, which is now considered by 



THE RELIGION OF THE HINDUS. 3 

scholars as the oldest revealed scripture of the world, 
are well aware of the fact that the Indo- Aryans of the 
Vedic period, at least 2000 B.C., were highly civilized 
and most advanced in the understanding of the spirit- 
ual, moral, and physical laws which governed the 
phenomenal world. 

The ancient Vedic Rishis, or Seers of Truth, de- 
scribed their knowledge of those laws in a simple, 
poetical language which is inspiring to readers in all 
ages. They described what they understood, and those 
descriptions show how vast was their wisdom, how 
deep was their insight in spiritual perception, how 
sublime was their conception of God and how grand 
was their idea of human immortality. 

Those impersonal descriptions of the laws which 
they discovered were handed down from generation to 
generation by memory, long before the art of writing 
was known to the world; they are therefore called in 
Sanskrit " Shruti," meaning that which is heard. 
Later, when they were collected together, they were 
also called " Veda," which means wisdom. By this 
word, Veda, was not meant any written book, but the 
collected wisdom of the ancient Seers of Truth; and 
as their religion stands upon the Veda, or the col- 
lected wisdom of the past ages, it is called Vedic Re- 
ligion, more properly " Vedanta Religion." 

These Vedic seers were great philosophers; they 
discovered and understood the law of evolution in this 
universe at a period when the Aryans of the West 
were dwelling in caves and painting their bodies in 
lieu of clothing. They discovered also the moral and 



4 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

spiritual laws which govern the higher life of the soul. 
When the Hindus use the word " Seer of Truth," 
they do not mean any seer of visions or dreamer of 
dreams; but they mean those great philosophers and 
saints who realized the higher truths by supercon- 
scious perception. The prophets, or seers of the Old 
Testament, were rarely philosophers, nor did they dis- 
cover any higher law; they were ethical teachers in de- 
generate times, pointing out the errors of their coun- 
trymen and warning them to cease from evil ways, 
under penalty of punishment by Jehovah. They pre- 
dicted events, and were regarded as prophets if the 
things came to pass. As Vedanta, or the religion of 
the Indo-Aryans, is based upon the spiritual laws dis- 
covered by the ancient " Seers of Truth," it is abso- 
lutely impersonal. There was no founder of the 
religion of the Hindus; it has existed from time imme- 
morial; but all other religions, like Zoroastrianism, 
Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism, had their 
founders and were built around the personality of 
those founders. The religion of the Hindus is not lim- 
ited by any book nor by the existence or non-exist- 
ence of any particular personage. If we study the 
words of the earliest known Rishi, or Vedic " Seer of 
Truth," even there we find that he alludes to others as 
having seen similar truths before himself. It is for this 
reason that the religion of the Indo-Aryans never had 
any particular creed or dogma or theology as its 
guide. Everything that harmonized with the eternal 
laws described by the ancient Seers of Truth was rec- 
ognized and accepted by them as true. 



THE RELIGION OF THE HINDUS. 5 

From the very beginning this religion has been as 
free as the air which we breathe. As air touches all 
flowers and carries their fragrance along with it, 
wherever it blows, so this religion takes in all that is 
true and beneficial to mankind. Like the sky over- 
head, it embraces the spiritual atmosphere around all 
nations and all countries. It is a well-known fact that 
the Vedanta religion of the Hindus surpasses Zoroas- 
trianism, Judaism, Christianity, or Mohammedanism 
in its antiquity, grandeur, sublimity, in its philosophy, 
and, above all, in its conception of God. The God of 
the Hindus is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, 
all-merciful, and impersonally personal. He is not 
like the extra-cosmic creator as described in Genesis, 
but is immanent and resident in nature; He is more 
merciful, more impartial, more just, more compas- 
sionate than Elohim Jahveh, the tribal god of the sons 
of Israel. The God of the Aryan religion is more be- 
nevolent and more unlimited in power and majesty 
than the Ahura Mazda of the Zoroastrians. 

As early as 1500 years before the Christian era, 
when the sons of Israel were worshipping their tribal 
god Jahveh in the form of a bull,* or calf, and were 
appeasing his wrath by bloody sacrifices, nay, by shed- 
ding human blood upon his altar, and were gradually 
outgrowing the sun-worship, Kewan or Saturn-wor- 
ship, tree and serpent-worship, and were struggling 
for a monotheistic conception of one moral ruler of 
nature ; at this early date the Aryans of India realized 

* See notes at the end. 



6 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

one all-pervading Supreme Spirit as the Creator, 
Preserver, and moral Ruler of all animate and inani- 
mate objects of the universe. When Zoroaster in 
Persia was preaching the dualistic concept of two 
spirits, the creator of good and the creator of evil, as 
two separate beings, the Aryan sages in India were 
proclaiming before the world that there were not two 
creators, but One, Who was above both good and 
evil. " That which exists is One; wise men call It by 
various names." (Rig Veda, I, 164, 46.) 

In the fourteenth century B.C., when Moses was 
reforming the immoral, lawless, nomadic tribes of 
Israel by giving them the ten commandments in the 
name of Jahveh; at that ancient time, the ethical 
teachings of the Vedic sages were already perfected, 
and almost all their followers were well established in 
the practice of the moral and spiritual principles of 
the Vedas. It was at this time that the sublime teach- 
ings of the immortal Bhagavad Gita, the " Song Celes- 
tial " as Sir Edwin Arnold calls it, were proclaimed 
by Krishna, the Christ of India. 

At a period when thinkers among the Semitic 
tribes were trying to explain the origin of the human 
race, as well as that of the universe, and were collect- 
ing the fragments of the mythological stories of 
creation which w^ere scattered among Chaldeans, 
Phoenicians, Babylonians, and Persians; at that time 
the minds of the Aryan philosophers of India were 
firmly established in the doctrine of the evolution of 
the universe out of one eternal Energy, called in 
Sanskrit " Prakriti," and the evolution of man from 



THE RELIGION OF THE HINDUS. 7 

lower animals was taught for the first time. Prof. 
Huxley admits this when he says : " To say nothing 
of Indian Sages, to whom Evolution was a familiar 
notion ages before Paul of Tarsus was born." 

When the worshippers of Jahveh had no conception 
of any existence after death, nor of the existence of 
soul as separate from and independent of body, nor 
of immortality ; in those days, the Aryan philosophers 
were fully established in their belief that the soul was 
separate from the body, and they were giving philo- 
sophical demonstrations and rational explanations of 
the nature of the Human soul, preaching before the 
masses that the soul was beginningless and endless 
and that it was indestructible. The Vedas assert 
" That (the human soul) the fire cannot burn, nor wa- 
ter moisten; the air cannot dry, nor the sword pierce." 

During the Babylonian captivity, which took place 
between 536 and 333 B.C., when the sons of the house 
of Israel were borrowing from the Parsees their ideas 
of heaven and hell and were modifying their imper- 
fect monotheistic conception of Jahveh from a tribal 
god into a god of the universe by giving him the 
attributes of Ahura Mazda; when they were adopting 
the Persian conception of angels, archangels, and a 
host of intermediate celestial beings; when they were 
beginning to accept the Persian idea of the resurrec- 
tion after death; at that time the glory of the Aryan 
religion was established and shown to the world by 
the advent of Buddha, the greatest religious reformer 
that the world has ever known. He taught that 
heaven and hell existed only in our minds, that the 



8 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

worship of an extra-cosmic personal god was not the 
highest form of belief, and that the belief in angels 
and archangels was a kind of superstition. 

About the time when the Pharisees among the 
Jews were beginning to believe in a heaven and to 
think that the highest ideal of life was to go there and 
enjoy the pleasures of life eternally, Buddha was 
preaching in India the doctrine of Reincarnation and 
the law of Karma, and was giving the most rational 
arguments against the desire for the enjoyment of 
pleasures in heaven, showing that these pleasures were 
non-eternal and that the goal of man was perfection, 
not enjoyment. Buddha taught the way of attaining 
perfection through the emancipation of the soul from 
the bonds of self-delusion. The ultimate ideals, ac- 
cording to the Vedanta religion, ought to be, not go- 
ing to some particular place of enjoyment, or before 
the throne of a personal god, but the knowledge of 
our true spiritual nature, and freedom from the bond- 
ages of ignorance and selfishness and all other imper- 
fections, through the attainment of god-consciousness 
in this life. Without fulfilling such ideals, our earthly 
existence is no better than that of animals — nay, it is 
not worth living. 

There is one peculiarity in the religion of the Indo- 
Aryans, and that is that it has never been separate 
from logic, science, and philosophy; it stands like a 
huge banyan tree, whose branches, spreading out in 
all directions, cover a large area of space; it has 
room for all phases of religious thought and all sys- 
tems of philosophy, from the highest flights of a Kant 



THE RELIGION OF THE HINDUS. 9 

or a Hegel, from the idealism of Bishop Berkeley and 
of Spinoza, from the loftiest pinnacles of the Platonic 
system, from the ultimate conclusions of modern 
agnosticism, down to the lowest form of ceremonial 
and ritualistic worship, worship of symbols, or hero- 
worship, or any other phases of religious thought 
which human minds have ever conceived* All these 
have place within the all-embracing fold of the relig- 
ion of the Hindus, because they alone recognize the 
necessity for different planes of religious expression in 
a world that is in different stages of human evolution. 
Cousin said: "The history of Indian philosophy is 
the abridged history of the philosophy of the world." 
It is for this reason that very few can correctly de- 
scribe the religion of this mighty nation of philoso- 
phers, or indicate exactly what it teaches. Here you 
may ask: " If there be so much diversity of opinion, 
how <can there be any harmony?" But this was an- 
swered by the ancient Vedanta philosophers who 
taught that there was unity under the variety of re- 
ligious thoughts, and in this unity lay the harmony 
between these apparently contradictory beliefs. The 
religion of the Indo-Aryans cannot be judged from 
outside. When a foreigner goes to India and looks 
about, he finds statues of some great sage, or he finds 
symbolic figures in temples that he does not under- 
stand, and he instantly jumps to a conclusion that 
the Hindus have no religion, and calls them idolators 
and worshippers of false gods. Imbued with the idea 
that the tribal god of the house of Israel was the only 
true God, and being brought up in a school where 



16 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

fanaticism and bigotry are the criteria of spiritual 
culture, unless they are unusually free from narrow- 
ness and prejudice, these foreigners are very apt to 
fall into entire misconception of Hindu life and ideals. 
Especially is this often true of Christian missionaries, 
who are frequently persons of strongly bigoted views, 
which unfit them to be fair and impartial observers. 
They can only look at things from one narrow stand- 
point, and so fail to see truly and correctly. 

When missionaries first went to India, they tried to 
make converts by force. Those who read the his- 
tory of India know how the Portuguese missionaries 
preached the Bible by holding swords and guns in 
their hands. We can only pity such fanatics, who in 
the name of religion sow the seeds of discord and 
quarrel wherever they go, and who in this age of en- 
lightenment believe that those who do not worship 
Jahveh, the tribal god of the house of Israel and ac- 
cept Christ as the only saviour of mankind, will all 
go to perdition. We are sorry for those who waste 
their wealth and energy by supporting institutions 
which breed fanaticism. What evidence is there that 
the worship of Elohim Jahveh should be the worship 
of the one true God, and why should the Supreme 
Being of the universe be called a false god when wor- 
shipped under any other name? The religion of the 
Hindus is not the worship of a false god. It is not 
idolatry. The Hindus never worshipped idols. Did 
you ever hear a Hindu explaining his own religion? 
You have heard what the missionaries have said, but 
why do you not ask the Hindu himself what kind of 



THE RELIGION OF THE HINDUS. If 

a god he worships? Why do you judge him ex parte y 
before hearing the Hindu's side of the question? 

Truth is the standard of a Hindu, the worship of 
Truth is his religion, and the attainment of Truth is 
his ideal. Truth is that which is not confined by any 
name or any form. Here I wish to make clear whether 
or not the Hindus are idolators. There is no such 
thing as idol-worship among the Hindus. When you 
go to India and visit a temple, there you may see a 
priest sitting before a statue of Krishna, or Buddha, 
or Rama, or of some great Incarnation, Prophet or 
Teacher. The so-called idols are either such statues, 
or else are merely symbols. They are understood as 
such by every Hindu. Do you know what they rep- 
resent? They are symbols of the Divine Energy, of 
the attributes of God, or of abstract ideas, hard to 
grasp without some outward form. The priest who 
sits before the statues of those who were living beings 
at one time, shows his reverence to these great spirit- 
ual Masters. If you go to this priest and ask his con- 
ception of God, you will hear him say : " God is 
omnipotent, infinite. His spirit pervades the whole 
universe. He is beyond all forms and names. He is 
the Soul of our souls; in Him we live, through Him 
we exist, and without Him there cannot be anything." 
Is this idolatry? What kind of idolatry is this? It is 
very easy for anybody to say that it is a worship of a 
false god, or of an idol, but if a person will look be- 
neath the surface and enquire of the Hindus them- 
selves, they can easily discover how mistaken are such 
assertions. If the Hindus are idol-worshippers be- 



12 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

cause they show respect to their spiritual Masters, like 
Krishna or Buddha, why should not the Christians be 
called idolaters when they show respect to Christ, 
kneeling down before his statue or picture? If the 
Hindu is idolatrous because he concentrates his mind 
upon some religious symbol, like the cross, or tri- 
angle, or circle, why should not the same term be ap- 
plied to the Christian when he thinks of the crucifix 
or keeps it on the altar? Did the Hindus get the cross 
or triangle from the Christians? History affirms that 
the cross existed in India as a religious symbol cen- 
turies before Christ was born; but a Hindu never de- 
nounces any other religion, nor finds fault with any 
other worship or conception of God, however childish 
or anthropomorphic it may be. 

True religion, according to the Hindus, does not 
consist in the belief in a certain set of dogmas or 
creeds, but in the attainment of god-consciousness 
through spiritual unfoldment. It is being and becom- 
ing God. It is the subjugation of selfish love and de- 
sire for self-aggrandizement, and the expression of 
Divine love, truthfulness, and kindness to all. The ob- 
ject of such a religion is the freedom of the soul from 
the bondages of the world. 

You have been told that the Hindus are immoral, 
that they are the most immoral nation on earth; and 
I am ashamed to say that some of my countrymen 
and women, having enlisted themselves as Christian 
converts, have told you in this hall, no longer ago 
than last Spring, that the Hindus were immoral, that 
they had no ethics, no religion. Being hypnotized, 



THE RELIGION OF THE HINDUS. 13 

as it were, by their propagandist^ zeal, they have for- 
gotten the facts. But, friends, if the religion of the 
Hindus has done nothing else, it has done this much : 
many of the worst vices that exist to-day among 
Christian nations do not exist in India. The crimes 
and vices with which the daily papers of America are 
filled are very rare in India. It has been said again 
and again that Christianity alone can make men and 
women moral; the Hindu asks: "Why has it not 
made the men and women of the Western countries 
more moral than they are to-day ?" Think of the 
most diabolical crimes committed all over the United 
States by so-called Christians and daily chronicled by 
the press! Your prisons and asylums are filled to 
their utmost capacity with criminals and lunatics. 
Will you therefore call Christianity a failure? Will 
you dare to claim that it alone of all religions in the 
world can make men good? Buddhists, Hindus, 
Mohammedans, and even large sections of the Chinese 
abstain entirely from intoxicating liquors, and the low 
percentage of brutality, of crimes of violence, and of 
cruelty to animals arises from the fact that they do 
not inflame their passions by alcoholic stimulants. 
Everywhere in this world there is wickedness and hu- 
man failure, but if all things be taken into considera- 
tion, it will be found that there is no preponderance 
of vice among the heathen, nor of virtue among the 
Christians. Human nature varies in its expression, 
but is much the same in itself all over the earth. 

The annual increase of criminals and lunatics in a 
nation not even 200 years old is perfectly appalling. 



14 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

In the whole of the United States 10,000 murders are 
committed every year. Hundreds of dead babies of 
illegitimate birth are found in vacant lots, in ash-bar- 
rels, in the rivers and on the roadsides. What has 
Christianity done to stop such crimes and vices? The 
words of Christ to those who see the mote in their 
brother's eye, but cannot discern the beam in their 
own eyes, should be remembered to-day. It is wise 
to let reforms begin at home, and that Christian na- 
tions should amend themselves before criticising the 
faults and failings of heathen lands. 

Dr. J. H. Barrows, who was the secretary of the Par- 
liament of Religions in Chicago, after visiting India 
for three months, returned to New York and gave a 
course of lectures. In one lecture I heard him say: 
" The Hindus have no ethics, no morality, no science, 
no philosophy, no religion; whatever they have got 
they have learned from Christian missionaries." On 
the contrary, any fair-minded student of the Hindu 
thought will notice at the outset that the philosophy 
and religion of the Hindus are based entirely upon 
the highest standard of ethics and morality. Prof. 
Max Miiller says " we find ethics in the beginning, 
ethics in the middle, and ethics in the end." No hu- 
man being can become truly spiritual unless he or 
she reaches moral perfection. Moral perfection is the 
beginning of spiritual life or spiritual evolution; and 
spiritual perfection consists in the manifestation of 
divinity and the emancipation of the soul from the 
bondages of ignorance and selfishness, which are the 
causes of sin and wickedness. A truly spiritual man 



THE RELIGION OF THE HINDUS. 15 

is master of himself and possesses perfect control over 
his animal nature. No man who is a slave to his pas- 
sions, desires, and animal propensities, however highly 
ethical he may appear in society, can be called truly 
moral, not to mention spiritual. 

Having these high ideals, the Hindu religion does 
not encourage any of the vices, and especially incul- 
cates an avoidance of drunkenness, which prevents its 
victims from gaining self-control. Hindu religion 
has no need of any help from temperance unions or 
the societies for the prevention of cruelty to women 
and children, or of cruelty to animals. Such societies 
are unknown among Hindus. Their religion itself has 
made the Hindus kind toward animals and has taught 
them to revere every woman as a representative of the 
Divine Mother on earth. Some of the Christian con- 
verts, in their zeal for eradicating certain social evils 
which have crept into Hindu society, have falsely at- 
tributed the causes of these evils to the religious ideas 
of the Hindus. Many of you have been told that the 
Hindu religion teaches that women have no souls. 
Such an absurd idea can only be accepted by those 
who do not study and investigate for themselves. No 
Hindu ever imagined anything so crude. We do not 
find any such idea in the Aryan religion; but we can 
perhaps trace its source to the Semitic conception of 
the creation of woman out of a man's rib, the lofty con- 
cept of the origin of woman that still stands in the 
Christian Bible! The Hindu knows that the soul is 
sexless and only manifests on the physical plane as 
either man or woman to fulfil a certain purpose in life. 



1 6 VEDANTA PILOSOPHHY. 

Some of you perhaps have the wrong impression 
that, according to the Hindu faith, a woman cannot 
reach salvation, but if you read a little of the Bha- 
gavad Gita you will find there: " All men and women, 
whether they believe in a God or not, are bound to 
reach perfection sooner or later." 

As Christian civilization has been founded upon 
commercialism and has kept the ethical standard in 
the background, so Aryan civilization in India has 
been based upon ethical standards, and commercialism 
was set aside and almost ignored. As a result the 
Christian nations have commercial prosperity, while 
the Hindus as a nation have lived for centuries ex- 
emplary moral lives and have become the spiritual 
teachers of the world. Read the accounts of the 
Greek and Chinese travellers who visited India both 
before and after the Christian era. Read Prof. Max 
Miiller's celebrated works, " India: What Can It 
Teach Us? " and " Life and Sayings of Rama Krisna," 
and learn the truth for yourselves. 

Hindu religion still produces men like Christ and 
Buddha, and women like Sarada Devi even in this 
age of commercialism and selfishness. How can a re- 
ligion which has no foundation upon the highest 
ideals of morality and ethics produce such men and 
women? The lives and characters of some of them 
have already within the last ten years become ideals 
for the masses. " A tree is known by its fruits," said 
Jesus, and he spoke truly. The characters of such 
men and women are the embodiments of ethics, the 
personifications of moral and spiritual perfection. 



THE RELIGION OF THE HINDUS. 17 

Therefore, when persons bring false charges against 
the religion of the Hindus, you should remember that 
they do it either through ignorance or through a 
feverish zeal for evangelizing India and converting it 
to Christian ideals. They feel it necessary to save the 
souls of the so-called heathen from eternal perdition. 

The religion of Vedanta does not teach that we are 
" born in sin and conceived in iniquity/' nor does it 
say that we have inherited as a birth-right the sins 
of some fallen man who was tempted by an evil spirit 
called " Satan." On the contrary, it tells us that all 
men and women, irrespective of their color, creed, or 
religious beliefs, are children of Immortal Bliss. It 
teaches that we are not the helpless victims of our 
parents' sins, but that our present condition is the re- 
sultant of our past deeds, and that our future state will 
be the result of our present actions. Parents do not 
create the souls of their children, they are but the 
channels, the instruments through which the individ- 
ual souls incarnate or manifest themselves on the 
physical plane. This idea is popularly known as the 
law of Karma and Reincarnation, which means the 
remanifestation on this earth of the individual soul, 
or the germ of life, according to its desires and ten- 
dencies, which will determine the conditions of its ex- 
istence. 

The religion of Vedanta may be called the " Sci- 
ence of the Soul." As modern science does not deal 
with dogmas and does not insist upon belief in the 
authority of any person or book, but depends entirely 
upon correct observation and experience of the facts 



l8 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

of nature to discover the laws which govern the phe- 
nomena of the universe, so Vedanta, or the Science 
of the Soul, does not deal with dogmas or creeds, but 
explains through logic and reason the spiritual nature 
of man, or the true nature of the soul. It describes 
the origin, growth, and process of its gradual evolu- 
tion from the minutest germ of life up to the highest 
spiritual man, as Christ, or Buddha, or Rama Krishna, 
as well as points out the purpose and ultimate goal 
of such evolution. This Science of the Soul discusses 
such questions as: Whether or not the soul can exist 
independently of the body; whether or not it existed 
before the present birth; whether or not it was cre- 
ated by any being? Vedanta enquires if the soul 
exist after death? If it retain its individuality? If it 
be free or bound? If bound, can it ever become 
free? etc. In attempting to solve such questions of 
vital importance, the Vedanta philosophers did not 
speculate like the Greek or German philosophers, but 
explained through logic and scientific method the 
spiritual laws which they discovered in their super- 
conscious state. Those spiritual laws gave a founda- 
tion to their religious system. The spiritual laws be- 
ing eternal, the religion which was based upon them 
is called " Eternal religion." 

In India religion and philosophy are one. Religion 
is the practical side of philosophy and the latter is the 
rational side of religion. They are inseparably con- 
nected. Therefore when we speak of Vedanta phil- 
osophy, we mean both religion and philosophy at the 
same time. Although there have been many other 



THE RELIGION OF THE HINDUS. 1 9 

philosophies in India, still Vedanta includes the fun- 
damental principles of all of them. 

The ancient thinkers in India, after studying the 
phenomena of the universe, started many theories to 
explain the origin of the phenomenal world of which 
the Atomic theory of Kanada and the Evolution 
theory of Kapila still remain unsurpassed* by similar 
scientific theories of the nineteenth century. Nearly 
four thousand years ago the Hindu philosophers came 
to understand that the world was not created out of 
nothing, but was the result of the evolution of one 
eternal Energy, which is called in Sanskrit Prakriti, 
in Latin, Procreatrix. In one of the Upanishads we 
read of a sage who was explaining the mystery of 
Creation to his son. He said: " My dear child, some 
people say that this world has come out of nothing, 
but how can something come out of nothing?" It 
has often been said that the doctrine of Evolution is 
the marvel of modern times, and that it was unknown 
in the past ages; but those who have studied more 
closely are aware that it was well known to the Hindus 
and that there are clear evidences of it among the 
Greeks. Well has it been said by Sir Monier Wil- 
liams that " The Hindus were Spinozites more than 
2000 years before the existence of Spinoza; Dar- 
winians many centuries before Darwin; and evolu- 
tionists many centuries before the doctrine of Evolu- 
tion had been accepted by the scientists of our time 
and before any word like evolution existed in any 
language of the world." — (" Hinduism and Brahmin- 
ism/') Standing upon the firm rock of the evolution 



2Q VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

theory, the Hindus explained the mysteries of the uni- 
verse, solved the problems of life, and arrived at a 
conclusion which has not yet been reached by the sci- 
entists of to-day. The evolutionists of ancient India 
did not arrive at the fatalistic conclusions of many of 
the modern evolutionists of the West. On the con- 
trary, they maintained that the individual soul is 
not brought into evolution by any cosmic force or 
extra-cosmic being, but that it creates its own destiny 
and moulds its own fate, by its own desires, tenden- 
cies, and actions. It is free to desire and to act in ac- 
cordance with its desire. Each individual soul is a 
storehouse of infinite powers and possesses unlimited 
possibilities. Souls were not created out of nothing 
nor by the will of any being, but are eternal, begin- 
ningless and endless. At present they appear, how* 
ever, as subject to the law of causation. The Hindus 
applied the law of causation to the moral and spiritual 
nature of individuals. In Sanskrit it is called " Law 
of Karma." By this law they explained why one man 
is born with good tendencies and another with evil 
ones. 

The Hindus do not believe that God creates one 
man to enjoy and another to suffer, nor do they be- 
lieve that He punishes the wicked or rewards the 
virtuous. Punishment and reward are but the re-' 
actions of our own actions. Each individual soul 
reaps the fruits of its own acts, either here or in some 
other existence. 

The religion of Vedanta does not teach the wor- 
ship of many gods, but of one God, who is called by 



THE RELIGION OF THE HINDUS. 21 

many names and who is free to appear in any form in 
accordance with the desires of the worshippers. The 
God of the Hindus has no particular name nor any 
particular form. Thousands of names are given to 
that Supreme Being who is nameless and formless. 
He is not extra-cosmic but intra-cosmic, and imma- 
nent as well as transcendent. He appears as with 
form to a dualist and without form to a non-dualist. 
He is one, yet His aspects are many. He is personal, 
impersonal, and beyond both. He appears as per- 
sonal to a dualistic or monotheistic worshipper, and 
as impersonal to a qualified non-dualistic believer or 
one who believes in the immanency and transcendency 
of God; while to a pure non-dualist, the same God is 
the one Infinite Ocean of absolute existence, intelli- 
gence, bliss, and love. 

The religion of the Hindus recognizes the spiritual 
growth of the soul and describes the different stages 
of spiritual development. In the first stage God ap- 
pears as extra-cosmic, as the Creator or the Father of 
the universe, Who dwells outside of ourselves and of 
the world. This is the dualistic conception of God. 

Some people say that the Hindus got the idea of 
the Fatherhood of God from Christian sources. But 
those who have read the Vedic literature, or even the 
Bhagavad Gita have found therein many passages 
where God is addressed as the Father of the universe. 
" O Lord, Thou art the Father of the universe both 
animate and inanimate. Thou art worshipped by all. 
None is equal to Thee in the triple world. Who then 



22 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

can excel Thee, O Thou of power incomparable? " 
(Bhagavad Gita, ch. xi., v. 43.) 

In the second stage, God appears as immanent in 
the universe; as the one stupendous Whole of which 
we are but parts. Then He is the Mother of the uni- 
verse as well as the Father; or, in other words, He is 
then the -material as well as the efficient cause of all 
phenomena. The idea of the Fatherhood of God is 
not considered by the Hindus to be the highest, be- 
cause it makes Him extrd-cosmic or outside of the 
world and as efficient cause only. In this concept na- 
ture coexists with God as the material cause of the 
universe. But when we comprehend that nature is 
nothing but the divine energy and inseparable from 
the Supreme Being, then He becomes the Mother of 
the universe as well as Father. This is called qualified 
non-dualistic conception. 

Thirdly, there is a still higher conception than this : 
the concept of the unity of the essential nature of 
man with the Universal Spirit or Reality of the uni- 
verse. From this point of view Christ said : " I and 
my Father are one." The Hindu says: " I am He, I 
am that one eternal Being." This union on the spir- 
itual plane is the highest ideal of all religions. 

The Hindus say that the dualistic belief in a per- 
sonal God with a human form and human attributes 
is the expression of the spiritual childhood of the 
soul. From dualism the soul rises through qualified 
non-dualism to monism. Each of these stages of 
spiritual development is true in itself, and necessary, 
as are childhood, youth, and maturity in the physical 
LrfC. 



THE RELIGION OF THE HINDUS. 23 

body. It is good to be born and brought up within 
the limits of a church creed as a dualist, but it is not 
good to remain there all through life, and he who 
does so has failed to outgrow the stage of spiritual 
childhood. Growth is life and stagnation is death. 
Therefore Vedanta recognizes the importance of spir- 
itual growth in religion. 

What we believe to-day may' not be necessary for 
us to-morrow; let us be ever ready to face the neces- 
sity of growth. But we must not go backward; we 
must move onward until the ideal is realized. " Arise, 
awake, seek the company of the wise, and stop not 
until the goal is reached;" until you see God every- 
where and become one with God. This has been the 
cry of the spiritual teachers of India. 

There is no other religion in the world which em- 
phasizes the attainment of God-consciousness in this 
life so much as the Vedanta religion of the Hindus. 

The paths which lead to this goal of all religions 
should vary according to the tendency, capacity, and 
spiritual development of the individual. Therefore 
Vedanta prescribes no set path, but offers many 
paths to suit different minds: such as the path of 
right knowledge and right discrimination (Jnana 
Yoga) ; of concentration and meditation (Raja Yoga) ; 
of work for work's sake (Karma Yoga); and lastly, 
of devotion and worship (Bhakti Yoga). Each of 
these paths has various branches. As one coat does 
not fit all bodies, so one path does not suit all minds. 

The religion of the Hindus has made them peace- 
loving and humane, and it is because of their religious 



24 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

ideas that the Hindus have never invaded any other 
country. They are not afflicted with the insatiable 
greed for power, wealth, and territorial possession, 
which is so strong among Christian nations. 

The Hindus practice non-resistance of evil, which 
was taught by the Vedanta, by Buddha, and after- 
wards by Christ, but which is not yet understood nor 
practiced by many of the followers of Christianity. 
Vedanta has made the Hindus realize that all the 
various religious sects and creeds of the world are but 
the partial expressions of one underlying Religion, 
which is nameless and universal. The knower of that 
underlying Religion does not need any creed, or de- 
nominational name, or particular Church. The wor- 
ship of Truth is his creed and denomination, and the 
human body is the holy temple wherein dwells the 
Eternal Spirit. The result of this grand idea is that 
there has been very little religious persecution in the 
whole religious history of India. 

It matters not to what sect, creed, or denomination 
we -may belong. Our first duty should be to see how 
far we have advanced in spiritual life, how near we 
have approached God-consciousness, and how much 
of the mastery over our animal nature we have ac- 
quired. Knowing these to be the essentials of true 
religion, a follower of the teachings of Vedanta never 
fights for a doctrine or a belief; never denounces the 
religious ideas of others; never says " my religion is 
true and yours is false " ; never preaches " my God is 
the only true one, all others are false " ; never perse- 
cutes another for differing from himself; but always 



THE RELIGION OF THE HINDUS. 25 

lends a helping hand to the followers of all sects 
and creeds who seek his spiritual help, sends good 
thoughts and blessings towards all, prays for all, and 
recognizes the unity of purpose in all the variety of 
sects and creeds. 

" O Lord ! As rivers rising from different moun- 
tains run, crooked or straight, towards ojne ocean, so 
all these different religions, sects, and creeds, rising 
from different points of view, flow crooked or 
straight toward Thee, the Infinite Ocean of existence, 
intelligence, bliss, and love/' 

NOTES. 

Regarding the worship of Jahveh in the form of a 
bull, Dr. A. Kuenen, the professor of theology at 
the University of Leyden, says : " Side by side with 
the worship of false gods, there existed in Ephraim a 
Jahveh-worship, which is strongly condemned by 
Amos and Hosea, nay, is placed by the latter entirely 
upon a level with the service of false gods. It is the 
worship of Jahveh under the form of a bull." (Re- 
ligion of Israel, Vol. I, p. 73.) 

As regards human sacrifices the Doctor says : " We 
cannot help assuming that those who worshipped 
Jahveh in this shape also slaughtered men in his 
honour." (p. 75.) 

u Jahveh was conceived by those who worshipped 
him to be a severe being, inaccessible to mankind, 
whom it was necessary to propitiate with sacrifices and 
offerings, and even with human sacrifices." (p. 249.) 



26 VEBANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

As regards sun-worship Dr. Kuenen says: "Origi- 
nally Jahveh was a god of light or of the sun, and the 
heat of the sun and consuming fire were considered 
to proceed from him and to be ruled by him/' (p. 249.) 

Kewan, or Chiun, or Saturn-worship is described 
in Amos, v. 26, 2j. Dr. Kuenen says : " Amos, in 
accordance with his contemporaries, ascribed the wor- 
ship of Saturn to the Israelites in the desert." Ac- 
cording to him there was a connection between the 
Saturn-worship and the dedication of the seventh 
day, and this custom was afterwards adopted and 
modified by the worshippers of Jahveh. (See Relig- 
ion of Israel, Vol. I, p. 264.) 

Tree-worship is mentioned in Deuteronomy, ch. 
xvi. 21. Grove (or Asherah) stands for a tree or stem 
driven into the ground close to the altar of Jahveh. 

" He (Hezekiah) removed the high places, and 
brake the pillars, and cut down the Asherah; and he 
brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had 
made; for unto those days the children of Israel did 
burn incense to it; and he called it Nehustan." (II. 
Kings xviii. 4, revised version.) 

According to the best authorities of the present 
day, Moses lived about the fourteenth century before 
Christ. Dr. Kuenen says: " The exodus is accord- 
ingly placed by one in B.C. 1321, by another in B.C. 
1320, and by a third in 13 14 B.C. Of course perfect 
accuracy on this point is unattainable. With this 
reservation I accept the year 1320 B.C. as the most 
probable." (R. of Is., Vol. I, p. 121.) 

It is a well-known fact that the book of Genesis 



THE RELIGION OF THE HINDUS. 27 

was not written by Moses, but by some priest during 
the period of Jewish exile in Babylonia. Professor 
Kuenen says : " It is true, he (the author of the book 
of Origins) is a priest, and as such is deeply attached 
to the Jahveh-worship, the ceremonies, and the privi- 
leges of the priesthood. . . . The author of the book 
of Origins was not the first in Israel to narrate his- 
tory, from the creation of the world to the settlement 
of the people in Canaan. The course which he had 
to follow, therefore, had been pointed out to him by 
his predecessors and especially by the author of the 
second Creation narrative and the accounts connected 
with it." (Vol. II, pp. 157-159.) 

Regarding the influence of Parseeism upon Judaism, 
Dr. Kuenen says: " We discover the traces of the in- 
fluence of the Persians in the doctrine of angels." Of 
the idea of Satan he says: " It would be hazardous to 
see the Persian notion of Auro-Mainyus in this small 
modification, were it not that the Jewish Satan sub- 
sequently acquired the traits of this spirit of dark- 
ness more and more. . . . The older Israelitish 
prophets and prophetic historians had not hesitated 
to derive even evil, moral evil not excepted, from 
Jahveh. This shows that the conception of the moral 
world had undergone an important change." (Vol. 
Ill, pp. 37-40.) 

On the subject of immortality Dr. Kuenen says: 
" The Israelite's ideas of the human body and soul 
and their mutual relation hardly admitted any other 
notion of man's existence after death than that of re- 
suscitation, i.e., of the miraculous restoration of the 



28 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

body into which the spirit returned. As soon as 
Jahveh takes back the breath of life, man and beast 
die. But that spirit does not live on, at all events not 
independently or individually. . . . Let it be taken 
into consideration, however, that the hope of a resur- 
rection from the dead also existed among the Persians. 
... Does it not become extremely probable, there- 
fore, that Parseeism was not entirely foreign to the 
rise and the first growth of the Jewish dogma? Must 
we not also assume here that the germs which lay 
hidden in Judaism were fertilized by contact with a re- 
ligion in which they had arrived at maturity?" (Rel. 
of Is., Vol. Ill, p. 43.) 

According to Hindu chronology, Krishna flour- 
ished in India about 1400 B.C. 



upv 30 leoi 



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